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Muffins in Rings

Muffins made in ring-shaped molds, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Muffins in Rings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, whisk the milk and egg together.

  3. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.

  4. Stir in the melted butter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium heat and grease it lightly.

  2. Pour the batter into ring molds on the griddle.

  3. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the muffins together as they set.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set and hold its shape when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the muffins rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates into a pourable batter.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the surface brown richly.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Heat that is too high browns the outside before the centre sets, while heat that is too low leaves the muffins pale and doughy. Medium heat lets the batter cook through and brown evenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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